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| Viking longboats are still
being built . |
| Courtesy Viking Ship Museum
in Roskilde |
Historians say that “Vikings” didn’t
exist until 780. Then, the technical mastery of
the ships reached the point where one could blend
Scandinavian, shipbuilder, peerless sailor, pirate,
colonizer and trader into that word. Naturally,
the pirate got the most press.
The Vikings, however, were mostly traders. They
traded furs, slaves, fish, timber, salt, wine, glass,
glue, and all manner of animals, including white
bears and walrus. They established market towns
and trade routes. Denmark as a trading nation was
beginning to be born.
Society today is sufficiently well informed to
rebuild a Viking ship and sail it, as was done in
1893 and many times since. Today’s archeological
evidence comes from graves, buried ships, sagas
and coin dating. Alan Binns, an English scholar,
has remarked that this last method is inexact due
to their very value, since their “careers can
be suspended by burial.”
Other sources aren’t much better, and often
worse. We have the version of Viking history told
by the monks, a group not noted for objective reporting
of alien cultures. The Viking sagas came three centuries
later, around the time of Chaucer, by poets just
as objective toward their forefathers as the monks
were.
“A mighty hive”
In the 9th century, Scandinavia was a small, chilly,
overpopulated place. Politically, there were the
usual wars and upheavals that drive people onwards.
Second sons, exactly like the Conquistadors, set
out to make their own way in life. They heard stories
from traders of easy pickings in other lands, and
they followed the money. They were good soldiers,
restless and hungry. They could conquer anything;
all they had to do was get to it. That’s where
the ships came in.
There has rarely been a smarter batch of shipbuilders,
and even today maritime buffs marvel at their skill.
These ships became the technological revolution
that would send the Vikings hurtling into the light
of history, and the world would hold its breath.
Their bravery was astounding. They set out upon
seas that they believed were riddled with sea monsters,
fanged whales that devoured whole boats, and inescapable
whirlpools that sucked boats to their destruction.
Their navigation was a marvel of recklessness and
cunning: they took three ravens and let them loose
at strategic periods to check their location. If
the raven flew back to the boat, they were too far
from anything. If it went back to port, they were
not far enough. If it went off in any other direction,
they would follow it. And, unfortunately for several
generations of English clergy, it worked. Those
sleek, perfectly balanced vessels rarely missed
their targets. Inside these wonders of technology
were massive, merciless warriors with names that
rival those of today's professional wrestlers: Thor
Oaklegs, Harold Bloodaxe, Svend Forkbeard.
There were never a lot of them, but they were so
fierce they overcame any opposition in their path.
They went on their voyages of plunder like seasonal
fruit pickers, using the fine weather to rape and
pillage and spending the winters sitting by the
fire, bragging about their exploits. Sir William
Temple described Scandinavia as “a mighty hive,
growing too full of people, [which] threw out some
new swarm…that took wing and sought out some
new abode, expelling the old inhabitants, and seating
themselves in their rooms.”
Viking legacy
Viking raiders sometimes dallied at their destinations
and there were fitful attempts at colonization.
The history of Europe as a whole was marked by their
intrusions.
The Vikings first came to Ireland in a raid on
Lambay in 795, attracted by the wealth of the monasteries.
In 836, amid the usual horrors, the first Viking
colony in Dublin was established. They did nothing
productive with it. Dublin was ruled by a fractious
succession of rival Danes and Norwegians whose newly
minted coins barely had a chance to cool before
they were booted out.
The Viking contact with Charlemagne brought them
into the spotlight of verifiable history. His military
campaigns illuminated the ages. It was due to his
northward ambitions, where he battled the Norse,
that his chroniclers turned the light on the Vikings.
Charlemagne's descendants did not live up to his
standards. The division of Charlemagne's empire
weakened the northern defenses, and the Vikings,
who already had motive and means, got the final
element of the crime: opportunity. They would not
be slow to charge into it.
It is said that your enemy can teach you things
that you could never learn elsewhere. The Vikings
showed the Franks, by demolishing every weak spot
in their defenses, just where their strong spot
was. It turned out to be Paris. The archbishop of
Reims wrote to Charles the Fat, that “he who
holds Paris commanded the [very strategic] Seine
and Marne and Yonne rivers.” The importance
of Paris began with that letter, and it went from
an oversized village to the masterpiece that it
became.
The word Danegeld (literally, money for
the Danes) came about by a payment of 7,000 pounds
of silver to a Viking chieftain named Ragnar, who
was actually Norwegian. He had just spent his Easter
Sunday, 845, sacking and burning Paris. Charles
the Bald, in a monumental piece of royal misjudgment,
considered the Vikings to be less dangerous than
a court intrigue and local rebellion that was occurring
at the same time. But all his money did was to show
the Vikings how much he had, and they started coming
back, every year, for more. And more.
Saga men
A Saga man was a bard, a poet, storyteller, singer,
and one whose audience fed him. He kept his audience
only as long as he could tell them clever and heroic
things. He told a story based on a fact or two,
with any variation that might occur to him, to keep
the story interesting. And since it was poetry,
rhythm might trump a minor fact.
Iceland, the poorest Viking settlement, produced
the best of the breed. Tenth-century court poets
like Grunnlaug Snaketongue and Eyvind the Plagiarist
were replaced by Icelandic saga men, who were some
of the best. According to Saxo Grammaticus, they
“made good their impoverishment with their
wits.”
Journey’s End
The Danelaw described the area of England
under Viking control, most prominently around York.
From this base, the Vikings tried to take more,
but they had the bad luck to try it during the reign
of King Alfred. In him, the Vikings bumped up against
British steel.
Ethelflaed, his formidable daughter, came to power
in 911. She built fortresses that stretched all
the way from Nottingham to London. The Danes couldn’t
knock them down, and after hurtling themselves against
their unyielding stone walls, they slunk away. One
chronicler said, “Their corpses were the joy
of the carrion.”
By then the Vikings’ first spurt had run out.
They were already becoming landed gentry, fat and
comfortable. They were content to merge with their
neighbors and become regular folks.
By 958, their mad eruption was over. The death
of Eirik Bloodaxe, the dangerous son of Eirik Fairhair,
the last Viking king of York, ended their wild ride.
As suddenly as it had started, the Vikings’
lust for blood spent itself. They shifted over to
colonizing and trading. They went on to “discover”
a lot of the North Atlantic. Their bloodlust, a
brutishness that all mankind shares, was gone, and
seems to be gone for good.
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